Crimson

“ Thy lash dropped blood; the murderer, at thy side,
⁠Showed his red hands, nor feared the vengeance due.
Thou didst sow earth with crimes, and, far and wide,
⁠A harvest of uncounted miseries grew,
Until the measure of thy sins at last
Was full, and then the avenging bolt was cast.
Go then, accursed of God, and take thy place
⁠With baleful memories of the elder time,
⁠With many a wasting pest, and nameless crime,
And bloody war that thinned the human race ”

“ In order to turn them away from the bad path, they are incessantly threatened with divine and human vengeance; incessantly a sinister clank is sounded in their ears: prison-keep, fetters, handcuffs; and, in the distance, in dark shadow, at the extreme horizon of crime, they have their attention directed to the executioner's axe glittering amidst the glare of everlasting flames. We observe that the intimidation is constant, fearful, and appalling. To him who does ill, imprisonment, infamy, punishment. This is just. But to him who does well does society award noble gifts, glorious distinctions? ”

“ This is a respectable crime, a crime committed principally by those who go to high-toned churches and fashionable meeting houses in velvets and feathers, in silks and satins, and who with upturned eyes and hypocritical voices, insult the majesty of heaven by drawling out, 'Lord have mercy upon us, miserable sinners!' Yet they are murderers—murderers of the worst kind, the shedders of innocent blood, consumers of their own flesh, whom the vengeance of God awaits! ”

“ Viewed in the unclouded light of Truth, what is War but organized murder,—murder of malice aforethought,—in cold blood,—under sanctions of impious law,—through the operation of an extensive machinery of crime,—with innumerable hands,—at incalculable cost of money,—by subtle contrivances of cunning and skill,—or amidst the fiendish atrocities of the savage, brutal assault? ”

“ I have duly committed a crime a day! Not a great crime, I trust, but still, in the eyes of one as strictly regulated as I used to be, a crime. But will my ghostly ancestors be satisfied with what I have done, or will they regard it as an unworthy subterfuge? [Addressing Pictures.] Oh, my forefathers, wallowers in blood, there came at last a day when, sick of crime, you, each and every, vowed to sin no more, and so, in agony, called welcome Death to free you from your cloying guiltiness. ”

“ Riot, crime, and violence are now the order of the day. One murder has already been committed, and the man whose hand is stained with his brother’s blood is here, as free as the rest; and that murderer’s hand is lifted up in an assembly, as if entitled to all the privileges of citizenship. ”

“ He that has committed murder, though he flees for his life, shall be continually haunted with terrors, shall himself flee to the pit, betray himself, and torment himself, like Cain, who, when he had killed his brother, became a fugitive and a vagabond, and trembled continually. 2. The duty of the avenger of blood, whether the magistrate or the next of kin, or whoever are concerned in making inquisition for blood, let them be close and vigorous in the prosecution, and let it not be bought off. Those that acquit the murderer, or do any thing to help him off, come in sharers in the guilt of blood ”

“ But murder will out sooner or later,—'Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.' In spite of all their infernal cunning and midnight secresy, justice has overtaken these monsters, and never again may the annals of any age or nation be stained with such revolting criminality. ”

“ Murder, no matter whether judicial, legalized or church sanctioned, will still remain murder, and will continue to cry to heaven for vengeance. "To-day thou art," great and mighty men; "to-morrow thou art not"—yes, a cold lump of clay with the skeletons of murdered men, the tears of widows and the crying orphans you caused, standing before you. You may be sure a just God will not be fooled by the arguments of cunning counselors, judges, ministers, priests, bishops or pious frauds, who may be hired or engaged to bring their country's youth to the slaughter house. ”

“ If the revolt and treachery of all most dear to him, the hatred of his very flesh and blood, the unceasing enmity of his own sons, a miserable old age, and a heart-broken death-bed—if these things may be deemed Heaven’s vengeance upon murder—then, of a surety, that murder was avenged! ”

“ When murder is for the time licensed and the blood of the defender of his door-stone and his hearth dabbles his gray hair on one or the other of those sacred places, and there is no thought of punishment for the red hand, except as God may silently mete it in the years to come. ”

“ That night, gentlemen, a murder was committed of a deeper and darker dye than guilt ordinarily wears: a murder which in centuries hence will stand amongst the blackest chapters in the gloomy annals of crime. ”

“ Master! the justice of man hath pronounced thy doom, and will soon be satisfied. With a common criminal our office would here end, and but a few words of exhortation to repentance would accompany him to the executioner. But, criminal as thou art, we cannot forget that for sixty years thou wast our neighbor and our friend, and that those hands now red with murder have carved many a pure and holy image to strengthen and lift our souls toward God. ”

“ In the riot of a tumultuous assembly by night, a house may be burnt, or a murder committed; in the eye of the law, all who are aiding and abetting there are each in his degree responsible for that crime; there may be difference in guilt, from the degree in which he is guilty who with his own hand perpetrated the deed, to that of him who merely joined the rabble from mischievous curiosity—degrees from that of wilful murder to that of more or less excusable homicide. ”

“ Death brooded palpably over the brown and grey Court, and held the tense faces of all in his thrall, and weighted every syllable of the speeches. Never was the irrelevancy of murder as a political weapon made more clear, and the fearful appropriateness of capital punishment seemed clear too, mystery requited with mystery. ”

“ The exceptional treatment of hanging and then burning the body of the criminal was owing to the crime being, over and above that of murder, the particularly heinous one, in the eye of the old laws, of petit treason, the murdered person being the master of, and person in authority over, the assassin. ”

“ If one drooped In the lovely Court—her dark glance dim, her feet Faint in the dance—the guiltless criminal Passed forth an exile from that Paradise, Lest he should see and suffer at her woe. Bright-eyed intendants watched to execute Sentence on such as spake of the harsh world Without, where aches and plagues were, tears and fears, And wail of mourners, and grim fume of pyres. ”

“ I feel myself to be a guilty wretch, an assassin, and murderer.”
“Mon Dieu, monsieur, you are talking in a wild, incoherent manner. Assassin and murderer—​bah! Be reasonable if you please. Don’t talk in such a false and ridiculous strain. Come, here we are at our domicile. Jump out, and come in—​ha, ha! and make your life happy. I won’t have you accuse yourself thus wrongfully. Murder—​bah! it is ridiculous.” ”

“ We listen to the clank of chains, and overhear the whispers of assassins. We mark the barbarous dissonance of mingled rage and triumph in the yell of an infuriated mob; we see the dismal glare of their burnings, and scent the loathsome steam of human victims offered in sacrifice. ”

“ Witnesses swore to atrocities enough to make one's blood run cold—of men guilty only of impecuniosity, half-starved, thrust naked into loathsome and pestiferous dungeons, beaten and chained, and persecuted to death. ”

“ Wild, with the utmost disdain in his countenance, answered as follows: "Art thou he whom I have selected out of my whole gang for this glorious undertaking, and dost thou cant of God's revenge against murder? You have, it seems, reconciled your conscience
(a pretty word) to robbery, from its being so common. Is it then the novelty of murder which deters you? Do you imagine that guns, and pistols, and swords, and knives, are the only instruments of death? Look into the world and see the numbers whom broken fortunes and broken hearts bring untimely to the grave. ”

“ But a horrible crime, a murder perpetrated under circumstances unusually diabolical, the criminal being no less a person than the last lord abbot himself, and the victim a beauteous girl whom he had seduced, rendered this institution accursed in the eyes of God and man. ”

“ The naked, strong body has known death, and sits in utter dejection, finished, hulked, a weight of shame. And what remains of life is in the face, whose expression is sinister and gruesome, like that of an unrelenting criminal violated by torture. The criminal look of misery and hatred on the fixed, violated face and in the bloodshot eyes is almost impossible. ”

“ The jury soon found this monster guilty,
The judge on him the awful sentence passed,
Saying, prepare yourself for the cruel murder,
For in this world, now, your die is cast;
And from your cell you will mount the scaffold,
And many thousands will you behind,
You must die the death of a malefactor,
May the Lord have mercy on your guilty soul. ”

“ The different punishments for offences are these, increasing with the enormity of the crime:—Fines, the stocks, imprisonment, labour in chains, flogging, branding, maiming, pagoda slavery, and death. The last, which seldom occurs but for murder and treason, is inflicted by decapitation, drowning, or crucifixion. ”

“ Ah! those cruel formalities of justice are a cloak to tyranny, they are a secret language, a solemn veil, intended to conceal the sword by which we are sacrificed to the insatiable idol of despotism. Murder, which they would represent to us as an horrible crime, we see practised by them without repugnance or remorse. ”

“ Then we look round through the political [100] world, and we ask ourselves: What great and terrible and sudden crime has been committed, what reckless slaughter and torture of the innocents, that blood can alone wash out blood? ”

“ It is the Crime of Crimes,—surpassing far the old Crimen Majestatis, pursued with vengeance by the laws of Rome, and containing all other crimes, as the greater contains the less. I do not go too far, when I call it the Crime against Nature, from which the soul recoils, and which language refuses to describe. ”

“ The day after this, I received a letter from my mother, in which she described, in language I should fail to do adequate justice to, were I to try, the interview she had had with her husband and son at the gaol in which they were confined, but sought to inspire me with hope that something would take place to establish their innocence, and bring the real perpetrators of the horrid crime to justice. I tried to think so too. Never, I reflected will the Almighty suffer two innocent beings to suffer for the sanguinary crime of the real assassin! ”

“ If the Almighty stamped on the brow of the first murderer the indelible and visible mark of his guilt, He has also established laws by which every succeeding criminal is not less irrevocably chained to the testimony of his crime; for every atom of his mortal frame, through whatever changes its severed particles may migrate, will still retain adhering to it, through every combination, some movement derived from that very muscular effort by which the crime itself was perpetrated. ”

“ And if thou wouldst have thy blasphemy against the Lord and against his saints forgiven, in this world or the next, look once more on the face of the prisoner, and be not shamefaced or afraid, but say out boldly whether you can swear to her in a court of justice as being the person whom you espied just now in the act—yea, the very act of murder. ”

“ And forthwith all the solemn judges, fierce military gentlemen, upper and under clergymen, detectives, hangmen, and officers of State are to try and sentence, to cut and stab, to pursue and lock up, to preach against and consign to damnation all who commit this new "crime," as if it were, indeed, a real crime in the eyes of God or man. ”

“ Hardened murderers, thieves, and assassins were here associated with boys in their teens who were undergoing imprisonment for some trifling robbery. It was not pleasant to rub elbows with miscreants who lounged past, almost smiling defiance, whilst the slim warder, in his straw hat, shirt sleeves, and drawers told you how such a fellow had murdered his mother, how another had killed a policeman, or a third had destroyed no less than three persons in a few moments. ”

“ It has been proposed, by a medical gentleman, whose philanthropy has assumed the appearance of a violent eruption, breaking out in every direction, that, if this abominable punishment, this destruction of life, which God Almighty has prescribed, in the case of murder, must continue to be inflicted, the “misguided young ladies” and “unfortunate men,” who commit that crime, shall be executed under the influence of ether. This may be considered the happiest suggestion of the age. ”

“ The other two more vulgar scoundrels were no doubt hanged, or stabbed in a brawl, or despatched in some such summary fashion sooner or later—a penalty for their crimes which seems light indeed to men of this brutal stamp, who consider a violent death as the most desirable and indeed only legitimate termination to existence. ”

“ Treason, murder, poisoning, arson, witchcraft, sodomy, idolatry, blasphemy, manstealing, adultery, false witness, conspiracy and rebellion, cursing, smiting of parents by children, being a stubborn or rebellious son, burglary, and rape (in particular circumstances) were offences punishable with death. ”